Renewable & recycled fibres

Why does KCA use renewable rather than recycled fibres?

Kimberly-Clark uses cellulose fibres to make its renowned tissue products. These fibres are extracted from wood and are fully renewable.

Kimberly-Clark Australia does use recycled paper for its packaging. We use 99% recycled fibre (on average) in the carton board for packaging.

However, it’s not feasible to only use recycled paper for tissue and personal hygiene products. Here’s why:

There is never enough recycled paper

Paper fibres can’t be recycled indefinitely because they break down and are lost in reprocessing. As a general guide, fibres can be reused up to six times before they become too short and damaged to be viable.

Also, some paper can’t be recycled, such as personal hygiene papers and paper contaminated with fat and foods.

Virgin fibre is always needed to replenish the continuing losses from the fibre stock.

The Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council (A3P) web site provides data on recycling and secondary fibre use in Australia (see the ‘Recycling’ and ‘Statistics’ material).

In Australia, 48% of all paper consumed is recovered and reused. If Kimberly-Clark used only recycled fibre for our tissue-based products, we wouldn’t be able to produce enough to meet demand, which would in turn send the price up and make it hard to buy.

Recycling paper uses energy and chemicals

In Australia, only 1% of recycled fibre is used in tissue grades – the paper grade that Kimberly-Clark makes. Of all recycled fibre used, 87% goes to packaging and industrial use where tough, hard and coarse materials are needed.

Making most recycled fibre suitable for tissue, including removing the ink and cleaning the fibres, requires a large amount of chemicals and energy, and produces wastes – which have their own environmental issues.

In fact, making one tonne of recycled paper produces about a tonne of wet sludge (30% solids) which can end up in landfill.

Quality, fit and balance

Some products suit recycled paper, such as the recycled packaging Kimberly-Clark uses. Making packaging from recycled fibre doesn’t involve as much energy or produce as much waste – it has technical, economic and environmental fit and balance.

Other products, such as tissue based personal hygiene products, have quality, cleanliness and functionality requirements that can make it inappropriate to use recycled fibre.

At Kimberly-Clark Australia, we consider the environmental “best fit” for each of our products on an individual basis.

Creating efficiencies

Kimberly-Clark Australia has used recycled fibre in the past. It was trucked 500 km from the city to our country-based mill at a financial and environmental cost.

To ensure quality and hygiene, we used premium grade off-cuts of unprinted writing paper – fibre which could otherwise have been recycled a number of times.

We found that, on balance, combining the environmental drain of transport, the energy and chemicals involved in recycling, and the limited recycling ability of our products after use, it was a more efficient use of all resources for us to source wood from local rural plantation supplies.